1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to cleaning contacts of electrical connectors and, more particularly, is concerned with a device for cleaning male and female contact pins and receptacle of electrical connectors, such as on a video game cassette and video game playing machine.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Home video games are a highly popular recreational activity. These games are contained in video game cassettes sold or rented to consumers at retail stores. They are played on a video display, such as a computer video display terminal or a home television screen, and operated by a video game playing machine interfaced with the computer or television. Video game playing machines can be purchased or rented by consumers for home use. The video game cassette plugs into the video game playing machine via mating of male contact pins on the cassette with a female contact receptacle on the machine.
The construction of a video game cassette itself is reasonably durable and can accommodate heavy use. However, retailers have experienced a relatively high rate of return of video game cassettes because consumers have encountered difficulty at times in getting games to play consistently and reliably on the video playing machines. The inventors herein have discovered that, in the vast majority of the returns they have examined, the source of the problem merely has been the accumulation of foreign matter, i.e., dirt, on the contacts of the video game cassette and/or video playing machine which up to the present consumers have been unable to remove
At the present time, there are a variety of devices available for cleaning audio tapes and player heads, video cassette tapes and recorders, compact disks and players and computer disks and drives. Unfortunately, none of these devices are particularly suited for use in cleaning electrical connector contacts of video game cassettes and video playing machines. Cleaning of the contacts of these components has been attempted by use of a Q-Tip applicator stick or a conventional wiping rag or cloth. However, all of these approaches have proven to be tedious, ineffective and unreliable.
Consequently, a pressing need exists for a device which will allow consumers to easily and effectively clean the contacts of these components and thereby substantially reduce, if not eliminate entirely, the high incidence of unnecessary store returns of this otherwise highly reliable product.